The director of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional health agency announced that hospitals in Lyon and the region would deprogram non-emergency operations in order to anticipate the increase in hospitalizations due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Lyon has been in the maximum alert zone since Thursday evening.
The spread of the coronavirus is accelerating with the consequence of postponing and deprogramming non-emergency operations in hospitals in Lyon and the surrounding area, starting next week.
In Lyon, the incidence rate of the virus jumped to 290 contaminations per 100,000 inhabitants instead of 240 at the beginning of the week.
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To avoid overflow in hospitals, one solution: deprogram non-emergency operations to increase reception capacity.
"It is believed that a deprogramming level of the order of 25 to 30% would be useful from now on," explains the director of the Regional Health Agency (ARS), Jean-Yves Le Grall.
Within 10 to 15 days, "a very sharp increase in hospitalizations for Covid"
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"We have to anticipate", warns Jean-Yves Le Grall because "the strong increase that we are currently seeing in contaminations will automatically translate within 10 to 15 days by a very strong increase in hospitalizations for Covid ".
"We have to prepare and this is the meaning of this deprogramming which will initially be of this order and can go on a complete deprogramming if the need arises in the coming weeks."
This effort requested by the ARS will be applied in public and private establishments and in the Lyon metropolitan area to the cities of Villefranche-sur-Saône, Vienne and Bourgoin-Jailleu.